What Could That Be?
by chemicalflashes
Summary: "What could that be?" Klaus asked, his head whirring with need for information. "That's the wrong question. The right one would be, why is it heading for us?" said Violet. [Set after Chapter Fourteen]


**I took a Very Fantastic Decision of writing a story in the middle of the night. This is the product of that.**

 *** o * o ***

 **What Could That Be?**

 **By chemicalflashes**

A pleasant breeze was blowing as Violet and Klaus rowed their boat through the relatively calm waters. The Sun was shining but it was not hot enough to sweat. Sunny was sitting in the middle of the boat with little Beatrice and helping her drink some water. Violet and Klaus kept on rowing.

Suddenly Beatrice began gurgling and pointing to her left with her chubby, little hand. "What? What is it?" Sunny asked gently.

"Interrogativo!" she replied, a word which here means, "A mysterious vessel of unknown origins is heading towards us,".

"Hhmph?" Sunny could not understand what Beatrice was saying. She was new to decoding baby-talk but the word sounded Italian and she was vexed up thinking what it might mean. Her brother and sister were the more experienced ones but she could not disturb them while they were busy rowing. She decided to look for herself.

There was nothing but she kept looking to keep the littlest one quiet. And then, Sunny saw it. It was vast question mark, hovering just below the deep blue surface of the salty sea. It kept continually appearing and disappearing under the roaring waves, but there it was, heading straight for them. Her eyes widened in shock.

"Violet! Klaus! Look, now!" she hissed over the sounds of the ocean.

"What's the matter, Sunny?" Violet said as she got up cautiously, so as to avoid rocking the boat and toppling them all into the sea and went to her. Klaus followed her slowly.

"Just look," she said and pointed towards the unknown thing.

Violet and Klaus looked over the looming question mark, which was now more nearer than before. They were rooted to their spots.

"What could that be?" Klaus asked, his head whirring with need for information.

"That's the wrong question. The right one would be, why is it heading for us?" said Violet, her hands itching with the need to invent something to help them escape their perilous predicament. But in the back of her mind, Violet knew that their chance to escape away had escaped itself.

The bombination grew louder and more louder as it neared them.

Minutes, seconds... (eternities?) later, Violet found herself face to face with the biggest beast she had ever seen. It had wet, reptile-like skin with a smooth metallic sheen. Its eyes were huge but them seemed to have a glassy hollowness about them and for a moment, she thought she saw a figure of a person in one of them. She gasped. In fact all of them, with the exception of little Beatrice, gasped.

The beast opened its dark mouth and engulfed all of them in one smooth motion. Violet, Klaus and Sunny with Beatrice in her arms, tumbled into the dark hollow of its body and hit the bottom.

Klaus barely registered that its stomach did not feel squishy but cool metal before fainting and drifting into the throes of unconsciousness.

* o * o *

When he awoke, he saw bright yellow lights glaring at him. He wanted to close his eyes again but then he remembered the beast and its strangely cool metallic stomach. His head ached terribly and he fingered it to find an enormous, swollen up bruise that had a bandage tied around it. The metallic stomach must have given it to him. He got up to see that on his left side on another bed, Violet had already woken up and she was regarding the place with questioning eyes. Eyes, he thought, which mirrored his own.

On his right side, Sunny was just beginning to stir up. There was no Beatrice, though. That got him very worried.

"Last I checked, we had been eaten by a very strange beast then where are we?" Violet asked, knowing that her brother would not be able to answer her question. She stroked her bandage encased arm.

"I don't know," Klaus said and asked another question of his own. "Where's Beatrice?"

"I don't know," she replied and looked down at her lap.

"There's so much to know, isn't it?" a voice suddenly spoke and Klaus and Violet looked ahead in shock, terror chilling their spines. Sunny got up at that instant, with confused, fog-lidden eyes. She stayed quiet.

It was a woman, with long black hair which was dark as the night itself. She had pale skin and was wearing a black shirt from which her, elegant hands peeked out and black trousers that covered her long legs. She was barefoot and she had sharp green eyes. Klaus had a bare hunch that she had been a femme fatale for many a man.

"Where's Beatrice?" he asked.

"You mean the little baby? She's fine and playing." the woman replied smoothly.

"You are lying! For all we know, you could be another one of Count Olaf's vicious associates trying to trap us," Violet shot back.

The woman gave her a withering glare that made Violet wish she had never said what she had just said.

"Look, I am the furthest thing you would get from Olaf and his brutes. I hate him and his lot, especially that man with a beard but no hair. Okay? So shut up and follow me if you want to see Beatrice because she is out there," she told them in a huff and quickly disappeared as fast as she had come.

Sunny raised her eyebrows at her siblings, silently asking if they should do what the woman had told them to do.

Violet brushed away the covers. "Whoever she is— she bandaged our wounds and gave us beds to rest. She might be acting for all I know but something about her tells me that she's telling the truth,"

"And besides," Klaus said grimly, "the worst she can do is keep Beatrice captive and/or throw us all overboard,"

Sunny shuddered on the way out.

* o * o *

Violet had suspected the beast to be a submarine the moment she had seen the figure in one of its hollow, glassy eyes. The room they had just walked out of had a sign saying, "Medical Room" on its steel door. The corridor was all made from metal and they were lit with the same yellow lights as in the room.

At the end of the corridor there was a staircase. Violet led the way as they climbed it. At the end of the staircase, there was door with a handle that one had to turn like a wheel to open it. It looked like a bank vault. She turned it and the heavy door opened with a click. Then she proceeded to push it and the door opened the way for them with an ancient, creaking sound.

When the door had been fully opened, they saw the woman was resting on a chair as she drank something from a porcelain cup. They saw two windows, showing them the dark, blue ocean and an array of controls near them. But most of all they saw Beatrice playing on the table with some a music box which was churning out a complicated but melodious tune. She gurgled happily at seeing them.

Sunny ran and engulfed the baby in a tight embrace.

The woman saw all of them over the rim of her porcelain cup but did not sat anything because before she could, a man that they had not noticed earlier spoke up. He was sitting in the unnoticeable far corner of the cabin and was wearing a grey suit and most of his face was covered from the shadows that his bowler hat was casting.

"You told me that they were still unconscious," he said to the woman in an accusing tone as he got up from his place and walked over to them.

The woman just rolled her eyes and looked away.

"Don't mind her, Baudelaires," the man said in a friendly voice as he stood before them. "She can be a little... difficult sometimes, you see... Oh, enough of my babbling— you must be wondering who I am. I am Lemony Snicket."

"You're the Lemony Snicket?" Klaus half asked and half exclaimed. "You are the one whom mother would have named Violet after if she had been a girl?"

"Yes, I am afraid, I am that Lemony Snicket." he replied with a smile.

"Finally!" spluttered Sunny. "Finally some answers!"

"Don't get too happy children," the woman said with a smile that might have meant anything, "it isn't as if he is going to tell you everything, like what your mother and he did in the—"

" _Ellington_!" he hissed.

" _Snicket_!" she hissed back, copying his tone.

The two of them burst out laughing. The Baudelaires watched on, bewildered. Beatrice just joined in them in the laughter. When the two had quietened down, the woman got up and picked the baby up from the table, who she had noticed was tired from all the adventures of that afternoon and said, "Now if you all will excuse me, I have to make my best friend's baby sleep."

That statement just made Klaus look at her in newfound wonder.

"What are you gawking at, boy? Kit Snicket was my best friend, whereas," she raised one of her question mark shaped eyebrows as if regarding the man beside her, "this man, not so much."

The man just stomped one of his shoes on the ground. "Oh come on, Feint— I did take you to see all of the world with me,"

"I believe _I_ took you to see all of the world in _my_ submarine,"

"This is VFD's submarine,"

"Which only I can control,"

"Look at us fighting like the Mitchums."

That quietened the woman. She spoke after a short pause. "Don't try to imply what you are trying to imply, Snicket. You might regret it," she said with a genuine smile. She walked away from the cabin with a flourish in her steps.

The three orphans and the man were the only ones left now.

"Now, I believe I have tell you a story— a real life story in all its complexity and completeness. I know you all have a lot of questions and a lot of your own answers whirling in your mind. Rest assured, I will try to tell you everything I can. A story has not got a beginning— well not really, because many things have usually happened before the beginning. So I will tell you everything from where I think you should know everything. You might think that what I am telling you doesn't have anything to do with you, but you would be wrong."

"So where's this starting point?" Violet piped up.

Lemony Snicket looked at all of them with kind eyes and began.

"There was a town, and there was a girl, and there was a theft..."

The Baudelaires listened on, already engrossed in the tale.

* o * o *

Three weeks later found them on their starting point of unfortunate events: Briny Beach. Before people awoke, the Baudelaires, Mr. Snicket and his mysterious associate, Ellington Feint worked quickly and dexterously while baby Beatrice slept on a clean cloth spread on the sand.

The Baudelaire's rowboat had smashed when they had fallen in the Bombinating Beast Submarine. (Mr. Snicket had later apologised to Violet about their fall, stating that Ms. Feint had run out of ladders these days) The five of them quickly set out the pieces of the rowboat on the shore to make it look like they had drowned.

"Why are we doing this, Mr. Snicket?" asked Sunny.

"To make the world think you all are dead and so it stops running after you," he replied swifty.

"But how would people know it was us?" asked Violet.

"I have already thought of that," the woman replied. "Violet, do you have your ribbon on you?"

"Well, yes."

"Good. Leave it in the debris,"

"I don't think that will suffice," Klaus said.

"It will have to," the woman said resolutely as she looked at the man. After so many years of being on the run together, they had learnt to communicate with their eyes alone.

As already discussed before with Hector, they waited at the beach till thirty minutes past five. At five thirty, an enormous hot air balloon appeared in the dawn sky. It had four human figures it. The hot air balloon lowered its ladders for the Baudelaires and Quigley Quagmire gave a dashing smile to Violet Baudelaire as she rushed forward.

"Don't forget her!" Mr. Snicket said to Violet as he gently caught hold of the sleeping baby and handed her to Klaus.

"I thought we had to say goodbye to her. I thought you wanted to keep her since she's your niece." the boy said to him as he took hold of Beatrice.

"Believe me, I want to but my associate and I are always neck-deep in treachery. A baby should not grow up amidst treachery. She would be better off with you."

Five minutes later, the Baudelaires were on the Self-Sustaing Hot Air Balloon.

"Goodbye! And take care!" both the sides said.

The two adults watched from their place on the ground as Quigley and Violet embraced tightly.

"Ah, young love. We were like that once, do you remember?" the man said.

" _Just you and me, underneath the stars,_ " she said with a smile which might have meant anything. It was a line she had said many years back under quite different circumstances.

" _You don't have to make it sound so gooey,_ " he told her and cracked up a weak smile.

 _ **The End, finally.**_

 **Please review. Thanks!**


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